I love rants. Don’t believe me? Read the title of my blog. So yeah, you’re convinced that I really love rants.

Notice that proverb above? Yes, that’s what I’m going to tell you in this post.

A lot of people who are fans of either Apple, Android, Google or iOS rant a lot about the one they like, and talk illogical bullshit about platform they hate. No, I’m not one of them. I’m not a fanboy specifically. I know the advantages and disdvantages of each OS and most importantly in addition to that, the history of each OS, which is what most of the rant-ers miss – half knowledge.

Though half knowledge while ranting does no harm, but still it’s bad to have half knowledge. Consider one day, if you come across violent person who is a fan of the platform you hate, and has full details about each operating system. You start your rants… I don’t have to tell the rest. Many rant-ers quote text from various sources which are biased towards either of the platforms and the statement makes absolutely no sense!

Things you need to know

Steve Jobs said this: Android is a stolen product.

There is no strong base for this claim. According to Apple, because Android contains features similar to iOS, it’s a stolen product. There might be many features similar in both OSes, I don’t know and I don’t care.

If too common things are patented and you call others who use it as theives, then life would be very difficult. For example the sync feature available everywhere. I don’t know who invented it. If it was patented by some company or person, we wouldn’t have free awesome services like Dropbox, Google Drive and iCloud. It’s just absurd and bullshit to call someone a thief because he used your idea and that idea is based on common sense.

Recently, Apple recently won the case against Samsung. One the lawsuits that Apple made against Samsung was the shape of a Samsung tablet which resembled the rectangular shape of iPad.

Wow, you patent a rectangle?! If there’s someone who owns patent of the rectangle then it’s the Greek Mathematicians who discovered the figure centuries ago. I don’t think they had a patent system back then, otherwise all of us would be paying hefty amounts to the mathetmaticians’ successor present now given the large number of rectangles we handle everyday in our life. The phone, keyboard, monitor, notebook, board – the list continues. There are just too many items.

Android is an Open Source project. We all know what an Open Source project is and how the Open Source model works. If you don’t know, you better search and learn more about it.

Samsung does NOT develop Android. Samsung had copied the hardware device designs of Apple product for which Apple had filed the lawsuits.

Android is developed by Open Handset Alliance which includes not only Google, but many other companies as well.

I’d again mention that Android is an open source project; so the majority – almost all code, is written by the open source community and not by any specfic company.

If that is not satisfying you much, then I’ll tell you a hard truth: iOS is also stolen if you consider the definition stolen as said by Apple.

The bigger question: Why iOS is stolen?

iOS was derived from OS X, which is an operating system developed by Apple. This OS X operating system, derives a lot of code from Darwin which again, derives code from NeXTSTEP, BSD. Notably, the BSD from which the derivation happened was FreeBSD which is a Free and Open Source operating system, similar to Unix which was derived from AT&T Unix, the first operating system that came into existence.

FreeBSD had and still has a license which allows people to commercially sell the product after modifications unlike the GNU GPL and other Open Source licenses. So what Apple did: took a few parts of FreeBSD, Darwin and others, merged into one bundle called OS X and sold it.

That’s the whole story behind OS X. Should now I call OS X is a stolen product because it derives from FreeBSD and other open source projects?

Probably Apple source that you worship would cover this history of iOS/OSX. I’m not against ranting (read the blog title again), but whatever you say must have a sensible and strong base.

Nilesh, the problem in case of android and iOS is not just about copying. Its about patent infringement. However illogical it may sound, but Apple has a patent of rounded corner rectangle shaped touchscreen device and for slide to unlock (though it is invented by maruti omni). A rule is a rule, however wrong, illogical or idiotic it may be.

Apple want to corner Samsung because Samsung sells more smartphone. Today its the UI/Android/Rectangle or slide-to-unlock, tomorrow it may be something else. Problem with android is its opensource nature, android really invented things. Here Apple is smart enough to target the things, which they can prove, not those which they cannot. e.g. Bounce back of icons is Apple Patent, Android (read Google) avoided that with sliding app drawer in ICS which continues to Widgets, but Samsung Touchviz still using that.

At the end, I should accept that I am Android fanboy. I have seen Android evolving from Eclair to Jelly beans. It’s openness is the power, which drives it well. Just needed some more time to stabilize and some more caution (may be some more lawyers) to avoid more rotten apples

Stock AOSP does NOT include gapps due to licensing. It’s still being debated if custom ROMs can legally have gapps included. Why do you think every CM ROM doesn’t have gapps installed? You have to download the package and flash it in recovery after you flash your ROM.

Also, your points for “Why iOS is stolen ?” are not valid.
“Should now I call OS X is a stolen product because it derives from FreeBSD and other open source projects?” FreeBSD license allows the code to be used in proprietary applications. Your point is wrong when comparing to android because, iOS is not open source.

Android copied ‘features’ from iOS, it is not same as iOS using a FreeBSD’s code.

The points you should include in “why iOS is stolen” must be features that iOS copied from android and other OSes, rather than what you pointed our above.

“Android is an Open Source project. We all know what an Open Source project is and how the Open Source model works.” Not true. Android’s open source model is little different than other open source projects.

LOL.
Did you ever seen a commit to AOSP source other than when Google releases a new version ?
They accepts merge requests through https://android-review.googlesource.com, but most of the time when you send a merge request, the reply will be “Already fixed on google’s internal branch” or “Fixed and will be available on next version”

Samsung _does_, however, design the touch viz thing on their phones. If there is one good thing that can come out of this is that Samsung will be forced to come up with a new UI, and I am hoping they just stick to the vanilla UI. The touch viz thing is crap.